The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA) manages the retirement funds of faculty and staff at 15,000 universities, hospitals and non-profits. TIAA is leading a financial movement to grab farmland and forest through both legal and illegal means. The company now owns 3 million acres making it the largest manager of farmland in the world, and a leader in the timber industry. It also has billions invested in fossil fuels and other climate destroying industries.
Most of us don't want to be benefiting from someone else losing land to our endowments or retirement investments. We know that land is not merely a financial asset or a commodity to be used in speculation; it's finite and central to life. Land is deeply important to communities, identities, and livelihoods. It's where most of our food comes from. Land-use choices are crucial to the future of the planet and people. Please see 3 actions you can take below on TIAA's land grabbing and climate destroying investments.
TIAA's biggest new acquisitions in the US have been in the Mississippi Delta where black farmers are struggling to get access to land and where black communities have been historically dispossessed. TIAA's largest acquisitions globally have been in Brazil, where TIAA has been found by the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform to have violated Brazil's laws. Local communities and civil society organizations have exposed TIAA's violation of human rights through its dealings with land grabbers and deforesters.
TIAA's lead has brought numerous public pension funds and university endowments into the act, with the latest public investor in TIAA's land funds being the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, but there are many more. These are not risk free benign investments. Harvard University Management Company, the largest endowment grabbing land, has already lost $150 million due to a single bad land deal connected to rights violations, but it has hundreds of millions of dollars at risk.
Three things you can do:
- Sign this petition to TIAA demanding divestment from land grabbing and climate destruction. You are joining 30,000 others who have already signed. Target delivery date is April 1.
- Join the Stop Land Grab campaign. Contact me if you want to join or organize a local petition delivery action at your university or local TIAA office.
- Join the growing list of groups that have passed a resolution against climate destruction and injustice. See the sample resolution here.
As a TIAA retirement plan participant, I am tired of the company's gaslighting on climate and land issues. Help spread the word by forwarding this information and starting conversations on your campus and at professional meetings. I hope to connect with some of you during AAG's virtual meetings.
Thanks, Doug
Doug Hertzler, PhD | Senior Policy Analyst | ActionAid USA
Pronouns: he/him
Email: doug.hertzler@actionaid.org
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Doug Hertzler, Ph.D.
Senior Policy Analyst
ActionAid USA
doug.hertzler@actionaid.org------------------------------